NetBSD faces a bleak future at best. In fact there may be no future for NetBSD. NetBSD is dying. Things are looking bad for *BSD in general. As many of us are
already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share; red ink flows like a river of blood. NetBSD is perhaps the most in endangered. Let's look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD
posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of
NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the BSD market. Therefore there are
(7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts. Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales
and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Major marketing surveys show that BSD has steadily
declined in market share. BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyists (i.e. those
who dabble with Minix, Xinu, etc). *BSD continue to falter. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, NetBSD is
dead.
I love you for the way you warm up each and every BSD thread. We can always count on you, no matter what else comes along.
Keep up the good work.
Cheers.
That said, most of the rest of what I wrote still stands - essentially distributions shipping the 4.4BSD-Lites derived kernels with the GNU Unix-like tools wouldn't really be providing users with anything substantially better/different to Linux.
I agree, and I think a Linux kernel with a BSD-like userland with a ports collection and beautifully organized source tree, the ability to 'cd/usr/src && make buildworld' and configure virtually the entire system from/etc/rc.conf, would be heaven. Such a distribution could even continue using the GNU tools. It's the sensible organization of BSD that I love so much.
Thou art quite wrong about BSD running on a Mach kernel. There have been implementations of BSD which run on Mach, one of which is Darwin. The other one that I know of is called Lites. There is also at least one version of Linux running on Mach and it is called RTLinux. Hurd also runs on a Mach kernel.
(Free,Open,Net)BSD uses its own native kernel. Some parts of the BSD kernel were borrowed from Mach, such as virtual memory, but this has been largely written (refer to the interview) and in the case of NetBSD dropped entirely.
Cygwin is very cool. But it's too bad that it kind of runs in its own little box, pretty much unaware of the windows environment around it. What would be very cool is to have a bash shell that runs all the windows and dos commands, not just unix ones.
Will you please explain how to install over ftp? I just installed Debian, and the install disk gave me no such option. I was quite disappointed.
I ended up making a partition and dumped the base system *.tgz files onto it from FreeBSD. Then I used that to install.
I've been using it for the last couple days, and I think it has a lot of nice features. However, I prefer the out of the box feel of FreeBSD.
I'd really like to see or create a linux distro that makes the current source available via CVSup and has the ability to do "make world" to update the entire OS from source code. I love that feature of *BSD and I also love the ports collection, although it does need some work. I think OpenPackages is a very exciting project. Yes, I am a FreeBSD zealot of sorts but I also love Linux. It's unfortunate that any BSD story on Slashdot is an almost guaranteed flame war.
Maybe someone could create a linux kernel that has only the bare minimum of services to boot with, then one (or more) of these could boot on top of it in user space, and then you have a microkernel style linux OS. Just an idea.
CVS is a good system for open source books as well as software. Books do not have to be written in a proprietary binary format. They can be written in DocBook or some other SGML or XML based format.
This leads me to wonder, are there any word processors that export these formats?
Where do you get the idea that mach is a monolithic kernel? Mach is a microkernel, albeit a very outdated one. HURD is not a microkernel. HURD is a set of user space servers that run on top of a microkernel, namely the aforementioned mach. Darwin is essentially FreeBSD 3.x running on top of mach.
This all makes me wonder. FreeBSD runs on x86, then Apple comes along and ports it to the PPC. Then they release it as open source and a bunch of hackers start porting it to the x86. Is there really an advantage to having a BSD running on mach? Especially since mach is notoriously slow. Why?
What I'm dying to know is the cost of the crack Tom was smoking when he said the quality of mpeg-4 was not noticeably different from mpeg-2. Not noticeably different! The image was made entirely of little blocks, er, should I say big herkin' blocks of pixel thingies.
to make a beowulf reference, which I just did. Maybe now it will be possible to create quantum computers that are much more functional than the ones that currently exist.
From WordNet flammable adj: possible to burn [syn {burnable}, {ignitable}, {ignitible}, {inflammable}] inflammable adj: possible to burn [syn {burnable}, {flammable}, {ignitable}, {ignitible}]
HURD is not itself a microkernel. It is a series of servers which run on top of the Mach microkernel. Mach is very old technology, a "first generation" microkernel and not known for its performance. There aren't really any "second generation" solutions that are open source other than Fiasco, and it has serious limitations.
I disagree with the article that the gui needs to be open source more than the kernel. Currently there are no complete "second generation" microkernels that are open source. Having the gui open source is cool too. Maybe it could be a replacement for X on Unix?
Galeon utilises the GNOME CORBA architecture too provide integration with GNOME transfer
Manager. The use of GNOME has enabled Galeon to provide more extensive features than it
otherwise would. Why people can't see that re-implementing fuctionality is more stupid and space
consuming than many apps sharing one or more libraries providing this functionality is beyond me.
Yes, when are people going to get it into their heads that in order to have a browser they need CORBA, goddamnit! I mean, when will they learn that they need drag and drop and components and graphical mail clients and graphical ftp clients and graphical modem dialers and games to go along with the browsing experience? Some people are just beyond me.
When I run it nothing happens. NOTHING. No diagnostic messages, no crash, no whirring of the hard
drives - a silence as profound as when the whale swallowed Jonah.
Everyone knows that when the whale swallowed Jonah there was the sound of a great big gulp.
Slashdot Mirror
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts. Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Major marketing surveys show that BSD has steadily declined in market share. BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyists (i.e. those who dabble with Minix, Xinu, etc). *BSD continue to falter. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, NetBSD is dead.
I love you for the way you warm up each and every BSD thread. We can always count on you, no matter what else comes along. Keep up the good work.
Cheers.
1. Linus Torvalds has no doubt seen Apple computers.
2. Steve Jobs is CEO of Apple.
I agree, and I think a Linux kernel with a BSD-like userland with a ports collection and beautifully organized source tree, the ability to 'cd /usr/src && make buildworld' and configure virtually the entire system from /etc/rc.conf, would be heaven. Such a distribution could even continue using the GNU tools. It's the sensible organization of BSD that I love so much.
Thou art quite wrong about BSD running on a Mach kernel. There have been implementations of BSD which run on Mach, one of which is Darwin. The other one that I know of is called Lites. There is also at least one version of Linux running on Mach and it is called RTLinux. Hurd also runs on a Mach kernel.
(Free,Open,Net)BSD uses its own native kernel. Some parts of the BSD kernel were borrowed from Mach, such as virtual memory, but this has been largely written (refer to the interview) and in the case of NetBSD dropped entirely.
Extinction is the path down which you are headed, O Anonymous One.
Look into thine heart, son. Look into thine heart.
Cygwin is very cool. But it's too bad that it kind of runs in its own little box, pretty much unaware of the windows environment around it. What would be very cool is to have a bash shell that runs all the windows and dos commands, not just unix ones.
Will you please explain how to install over ftp? I just installed Debian, and the install disk gave me no such option. I was quite disappointed.
I ended up making a partition and dumped the base system *.tgz files onto it from FreeBSD. Then I used that to install.
I've been using it for the last couple days, and I think it has a lot of nice features. However, I prefer the out of the box feel of FreeBSD.
I'd really like to see or create a linux distro that makes the current source available via CVSup and has the ability to do "make world" to update the entire OS from source code. I love that feature of *BSD and I also love the ports collection, although it does need some work. I think OpenPackages is a very exciting project.
Yes, I am a FreeBSD zealot of sorts but I also love Linux. It's unfortunate that any BSD story on Slashdot is an almost guaranteed flame war.
McKusick, the creator of the logo, has asked that he be referred to as the daemon, and if anything else, "Chuck."
Ahem. He has asked that it be called "Beastie". Where do you people get "Chuck" from? It's an awful name for him.
The design work has already been done. All someone needs to do is change the text to say "Linux...it evolves along with you"
Maybe someone could create a linux kernel that has only the bare minimum of services to boot with, then one (or more) of these could boot on top of it in user space, and then you have a microkernel style linux OS. Just an idea.
This leads me to wonder, are there any word processors that export these formats?
This all makes me wonder. FreeBSD runs on x86, then Apple comes along and ports it to the PPC. Then they release it as open source and a bunch of hackers start porting it to the x86. Is there really an advantage to having a BSD running on mach? Especially since mach is notoriously slow. Why?
What I'm dying to know is the cost of the crack Tom was smoking when he said the quality of mpeg-4 was not noticeably different from mpeg-2. Not noticeably different! The image was made entirely of little blocks, er, should I say big herkin' blocks of pixel thingies.
That was quite a nice post until the last paragraph when you made it clear that you were a tr0ll.
to make a beowulf reference, which I just did.
Maybe now it will be possible to create quantum computers that are much more functional than the ones that currently exist.
The answer to that is simple: the BSD license. Why reinvent the wheel?
52001? I don't think there's going to be an orbit in 52001.
From WordNet
flammable
adj: possible to burn [syn {burnable}, {ignitable}, {ignitible}, {inflammable}]
inflammable
adj: possible to burn [syn {burnable}, {flammable}, {ignitable}, {ignitible}]
HURD is not itself a microkernel. It is a series of servers which run on top of the Mach microkernel. Mach is very old technology, a "first generation" microkernel and not known for its performance. There aren't really any "second generation" solutions that are open source other than Fiasco, and it has serious limitations.
No, you are wrong. Apple created Darwin using software that was already open source, e.g. the mach microkernel and FreeBSD. Nothing new there.
I disagree with the article that the gui needs to be open source more than the kernel. Currently there are no complete "second generation" microkernels that are open source. Having the gui open source is cool too. Maybe it could be a replacement for X on Unix?
I think Mozilla not having its own jvm built in is one of the beast's best features. Now if they would do the same for mail and news clients...
Yes, when are people going to get it into their heads that in order to have a browser they need CORBA, goddamnit! I mean, when will they learn that they need drag and drop and components and graphical mail clients and graphical ftp clients and graphical modem dialers and games to go along with the browsing experience? Some people are just beyond me.
Everyone knows that when the whale swallowed Jonah there was the sound of a great big gulp.